4 Profile Considerations for Social Media Rebrand

Social media branding plays a vital role in creating and maintaining your brand image. Your social profiles should be treated as an extension of your brand identity. A disconnected social presence can negatively impact the lens through which customers view your company. An inconsistent application of visual features, plus incoherent messaging on social networks can lead to customer confusion and disengagement.

Whether you’re simply looking to tweak your existing logo or complete an overhaul of your company’s visual identity, it’s very important to consider all of the social platforms your brand is currently visible and active. Before, during and after launching any type of rebrand, there are certain big considerations that will help you deliver consistency across all social channels. To reduce the risk of customer attrition, review this social media branding checklist to ensure your social profiles properly align with brand standards and company goals.

REBRANDING USING SOCIAL MEDIA

Given the current popularity of social media marketing, your company may have multiple social accounts, which means you’ve got a lot of updating to do. From a simple listing on Yelp, to an entire Facebook community, you need to make sure that your social media branding is consistent across all platforms.

One way is to learn from the mistakes of other businesses like Netflix. In doing so, we’ve identified the essentials to an effective social media rebrand:

Identify Your Social Existence Verify which social media accounts your company is currently listed with. Scroll through your inbox for confirmation emails, password resets, welcome emails, etc., for a full list of sites containing your company profile. Determine which platforms your company currently maintains an active presence on and delete the profiles not proving fruitful. This will help reduce the workload and time committed to your social media rebrand. One of the best parts about rebranding is that you get to reevaluate where you’re spending your time and efforts verse where you should be.Note: Prior to deleting any social profile, redirect followers to your preferred platforms to ensure you don’t delete valuable leads.

Identify Obstacles to Success Once you’ve determined which platforms you’ll need to rebrand, the next step is determining how difficult it will be to incorporate your new brand image into your existing community. You’ll need to decide what makes sense for your business and what will be easiest to implement within your social networks.Be sure you know the rules of each platform, and take them into careful consideration when changing your username, vanity url or other profile information. Some are stricter than others, but there’s usually a workaround of some sort. Avoid unnecessary headaches by remaining cognizant of what you can and cannot do on each platform before you engage in a social media rebrand.For example, if you’re changing your business name, you may need to change your Twitter handle to reflect your new name. However, that username may already be taken. Also, consider what happens when someone attempts to contact you using your old handle or username. In the event you do change your username, remember to send an update message to your followers.

Create Social Media Friendly Images While in the past, you may have had to compromise brand visuals to fit the dimensions of each social network, now you have the opportunity to work these required dimensions into your rebranding strategy.Rely on research to determine the profile elements that have the biggest impact on an audience and incorporate those elements into your visual identity. This will make it easier to adapt your new visuals and content for a picture perfect social profile that attracts more followers. For example, avoid combining your logo with your tagline. Keep your tagline as a separate entity from your logo, so you have more flexibility with its placement and sizing across all social media sites.Once you select your visuals, we recommend giving your fans a preview of your images in their final stages to generate some excitement around them, which brings us to our final tip…

Keep Your Audience Informed One of the most important aspects of rebranding your social media presence is keeping your existing audience informed and engaged in what you’re doing. Don’t spring it on your followers last minute that you’ve changed your business name, a product name, or your entire company identity. They won’t appreciate the lack of communication and requested involvement in the transition.Involve your online community in your next rebrand. Share regular updates on each company social media account and ask for feedback; encourage a two-way conversation about what you’re doing. People want to be involved with the brands they follow, and by including them in the rebranding process, your fans have the opportunity to voice their opinions, good or bad. You don’t have to listen to all of their suggestions, but you may learn more about how your brand is perceived — more than you ever thought imaginable.

Rebranding your social media presence can be a complex and tedious process if not properly managed. By leveraging our checklist, you can streamline the rebrand process without losing followers in the process.